Secondaries for Knights?

[librisrouge]

I'm looking at the secondaries in the current tournament environment for Knight armies and, wow, am I kinda disappointed. I'd bet that this alone could account for knight players current poor performances. I'm posting these thoughts here because, frankly, I'd like to be proven wrong, so please go at this.

 

BROKEN DOWN BY CATEGORY:

 

PURGE THE ENEMY-

ASSASSINATION- 100% dependent on what the enemy takes but you'll probably take this OR

BRING IT DOWN- this OR

TITAN HUNTER- this, if either of them can earn you the needed points. In a competitive environment, it'll be rare than any of these can be maxed out though.

DUEL OF HONOUR (Book Secondary)- To max this out, you need 1) your warlord 2) to kill 3) in melee 4) their warlord and 5) their two most expensive units. If you kill by shooting, you lose 40% of the points. If you kill in melee but with another knight, you lose 20% of the points. If you fail to kill any of these units, you lose another point. Killing the warlord, period, nets another point. Not a great secondary, if you're wanting to get game winning points, but not a terrible selection if you have a melee centric warlord (pimp that gallant!)

 

NO MERCY, NO RESPITE-

NO PRISONERS- Like the above, this is 100% dependent on what the enemy takes but you'll probably take this if you can

TO THE LAST- The units selected for this are going to be big knights that the enemy is going to target anyway. If your enemy can't kill 1-2 of them, even if they still lose, then they weren't prepared to take on armor at all, sadly.

GRIND THEM DOWN- This is probably the best secondary for knights in the game, particularly if you're not going too heavy on the armigers (which will be rough since the codex emphasizes them.)

HONOUR OF THE HOUSE (Book Secondary)- You can't earn it on the first round plus you can only get 2 points a round, plus 3 at the end of the game, meaning it cannot be maxed out even if everything goes perfect. 

 

WARPCRAFT-

ABHOR THE WITCH- Like so many of above, this is 100% dependent on what the enemy takes but you'll probably take this if you can

PIERCE THE VEIL, WARP RITUAL, and PSYCHIC INTERROGATION- Can't be done unless you're mixing codices.

 

SHADOW OPERATIONS-

RAISE THE BANNERS HIGH, RETRIEVE NACHMUND DATA, DEPLOY TELEPORT HOMERS, and INVESTIGATE SIGNAL- Literally cannot be done by our codex.

RENEW THE OATHS (Book Secondary)- You get a unique action that knights can do and need to do in the center of the map. You get more points based on what does it: 3 base, +1 TITANIC, +1 character. You can conceivably earn the max on this rather easily...if you want a character knight to sit out three turns of the game. Why yes, GW, I do want to play without 25% of my list! Why do you ask? Of course, you can do this with an armiger, and it might be best to, plus I can see this being a really boon on the last turn if you still need the points and have a machine alive and close enough. Shame that we only have one way to do actions without freezing up and it is for armigers (and doesn't work consistently.)

 

BATTLEFIELD SUPREMACY-

BEHIND ENEMY LINES- We're fast but we're not THAT tough and can't hide at all, so you'll have to be lucky to not start dropping if you're right in the enemy's face from early enough to get meaningful points out of this. Not a terrible choice but not a great one either.

ENGAGE ON ALL FRONTS- This also has potential (the whole category might be our best) but is requires that the army spread out. This is a bummer, since so much of the army is full of options built around supporting each other. Hardly a deal breaker though.

STRANGLEHOLD- Almost the same as above but at least it is something you should have already been doing.

YIELD NO GROUND (Book Secondary)- Kind of a mesh of all of the above. Not terrible and worth considering. Shame all of the "worth considering" secondaries are in the same category though.

 

It seems to me that our secondary setup is 90% of the time going to be Grind Them Down + Best PURGE THE ENEMY (or ABHOR) + best BATTLEFIELD SUPREMACY.

 

This feels like I'm putting a lot of control of my points into the hands of my enemies and no in my own control, since I'm hoping the enemy has a list with one category of things that I'm now eager to kill. I can minimize that by taking a melee knight warlord (lancers need updates) and leaning into DUEL OF HONOR but that is very restrictive on list building. 

 

 

What am I missing? Is there something I'm not seeing here?

[sairence]

So of the Knight specific ones:

 

Yield no Ground is very good. The fact that you can max it in 3 turns for conditions that shouldn't be too difficult and that you will likely want to do anyway makes it very nice. Unless the game goes south rapidly you you should generally score 10+ points in this imo.

 

Renew the Oaths is tricky, but I'm warming up to it. The big advantages are again that you can max it in 3 turns and that you can do it from turn 1. Depending on your army build, it's not unlikely that you might have a big Knight or an Armiger that can foregoe shooting turn 1 to net you points straight from the get go. And your crippled almost dead Knight will score the same points for it as your fully fresh one. Again, should be manageable to score 10+ points unless you are getting massacred, because it only takes 2 rounds to get there.

 

Plus, since you can only take one Codex secondary in tournament play, this opens up Stranglehold and the like, which again, is something you want to be doing to deny your opponent primaries anyway.

 

The other two Codex ones seem to niche or dependent on what your does to be really be useful.

 

Outside of those, it'll likely come down to a kill secondary based on what you're facing. Grind seems decent on paper, but always ends up feeling like a bit of a trap to me, since you need to be getting it most turns to get over 10VP. To The Last feels similar to me for the reasons you mentioned. We'll likely only max it if we're stomping our opponent anyway.

Edited May 31, 2022 by sairence